Thursday, November 16, 2006

Svalastog – Woodwork

Tromsø, Norway… population 50000… would seem to have some native energy that powers experimental musicians. Biosphere, Alog and Röyksopp have all exported their own versions of winter-warmed electronics and are now joined by Per Henrik Svalastog. On his second solo full length he explores the traditional sounds of his remote home, using Harpeleik (Norwegian zither), Bukkehorn (ram’s horn) and Kuhorn (cow’s horn) as source instruments. Opener “the wood metal friction” introduces these sounds with a fanfare that is soon recast into a marching lope of bass pulses and seesawing strings. While Svalastog never masks or pitch shifts the original tonality, he is fairly liberal is his cutting and ordering of blocks. The tracks have a mantra-like quality, with the zither strings clipped and interlocking into regular measures and the horns blunted into bass notes. The result is the kind of microHouse you might expect in the most modern of mead halls. Ultimately Woodwork is a remarkably pure and simple synthesis of temporally discrete elements. The hills may soon be alive with laptops recording the horns of Ricola barkers and Balalaikas ringing out.

About Surgery Radio

The roots of Surgery are in an on/air radio show called perMUTATIONS that I did on CHSR-FM 97.9 (Fredericton, NB, Canada) between 1999-2004. It was initially called the Y2K-Mart, but after 1999 that wasn't really funny anymore. Surgery picked up where perMUTATIONS let off, and includes other occasional features like reviews and interviews.

The shows are roughly bi-monthly and concentrate on the soft boundaries of experimental music.

Each show is an hourlong block split into two by "station ID" but with no other DJ intrusion.

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